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Guest (Female): This is Connect with Skip Heitzig. Thanks for joining us today. Here at Connect with Skip, our mission is to help you know God's Word and apply it to your life through clear, practical Bible teaching and real encouragement every day.

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Skip Heitzig: In the Christian world, a testimony is the story of how a person comes to believe in Christ. You've heard people say, "Let me share my testimony with you," or you've done that. It's how a person has come to believe that Jesus is who He claimed to be. Now, there are some churches that have testimony meetings or testimony times before a meeting—typically they're smaller when you can hear everybody out. But sometimes a testimony includes not only how a person came to Christ, but how God was faithful in a particular situation. Maybe they went through a trial or a sickness, and they want you to know what God did for them, through them, during that time.

And I've always found that personal testimonies are uplifting and very inspiring, usually. Sometimes testimonies can seem to drag on and on and on as more details are given. And sometimes testimonies morph over time; they change. And it's like if I've heard a person's testimony, I've noticed that there's a tendency—not always, but sometimes—to make those stories grow bigger than they really are, sort of like fish stories. Every time you tell a fish story the fish keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger until pretty soon you were out on the ocean and you caught Moby Dick or something.

And so, testimonies can be like that, and that's because as human beings, we typically like to talk about ourselves and we like to outdo other people's stories. So it's like, "Wait until you hear my testimony." So there was an old guy who loved to talk about how he was delivered from a local flood, the Johnstown Flood. And he loved to tell the story about God's deliverance and told it in great detail. And he always looked for testimony meetings where he could share.

Well, this old guy died one day and was taken to heaven, and Peter introduced himself and said, "Well, I just want you to know that tonight we're getting everybody together in heaven. They're going to tell their testimonies, their stories." Well, his eyes lit up. He thought, "Man, I died on the right day." He said, "Peter, you've got to let me tell the story of how I was delivered by God, my testimony how God saved me from the Johnstown Flood. It's a great story. Everybody's going to love this story." And Peter hesitated a moment and he said, "Sure, you can tell your story about the flood, but just remember Noah will be in the audience tonight."

As we think of our personal testimonies of how we came to Christ, let's just imagine Paul the apostle is in our audience today. Because in the verses that we're about to read, essentially Paul gives his testimony. He talks about his past and then something that happened to him—he mentions that or he points to that with a word—and then how things have changed. So what I want to share with you today in principle form are three ingredients in building an effective testimony. Three ingredients on building an effective testimony: first, you need to shred your religious resume; number two, you need to have a spiritual encounter; and number three, you need to learn how to count.

Let me explain once we get into our text. Let's look at verse four of Philippians chapter three. Paul continues his thought: "Though I also might have confidence in the flesh. If anyone else thinks that he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so: circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the church; concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ.

Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith." That is Paul's personal testimony in a nutshell. I'll never forget my high school reunion. I only went to one, that was my 10-year reunion, but I remember it because I was saved and I wanted to share my testimony with people, which I did.

They were kind of shocked. "You're a what? You preach the gospel? You're not loaded anymore?" But I remember at my high school reunion a guy by the name of John Booth. Now, John Booth in my high school was like the jock, the football hero; everybody loved him and looked to him. And what I noticed when I went into the reunion was John Booth across the room with a big smile on his face. And I never saw him smile in high school. He never needed to; he just sort of grunted his way out to the football field. But he's smiling, and I was talking to him and he started telling me his personal testimony how he came to believe in Jesus Christ, and it was awesome. He was going from table to table sharing his testimony.

What do you think it would be like to go to Paul the apostle's high school reunion? So imagine yourself at Tarsus High—that's where Paul graduated. It's the 10-year high school reunion. There's Saul of Tarsus, and you know him, so you walk up and go, "Hey, Saul! So, are you still into that rabbi thing? You still going to Jerusalem with Gamaliel and all that?" And Paul might look at you and say, "Well, a funny thing happened to me on the way to Damascus." And he would talk about an encounter that he had with the Lord Jesus Christ and now he's traveling the world and preaching the gospel.

Today, what I want you to do is take off your 21st-century glasses and put on your 1st-century glasses. Instead of just thinking of Paul as the great Christian apostle, remember that he had a Jewish religious background. He was very well-educated and he was very well-trained in a religious system. But he had an encounter with Christ that changed everything. I have a book called *The Jewish 100*, it was by Michael Shapiro, that's the author. And this is a biographical study of 100 of the most influential Jewish people of all time.

Now what's interesting to me is who's in the top tier. So number one in the book, the number one influential Jew of all times according to Michael Shapiro in his book, was Moses. Moses is number one on the list. Now, I understand that because Jewish people look back to Moses as the great lawgiver, the covenant giver. Number two on his list is Jesus Christ, because even as a Jewish person he recognizes that Jesus changed history, so he gives Him the number two slot. Number three on the list is Albert Einstein. Interestingly, number four, Sigmund Freud—I wouldn't put him in the top tier, but he did.

Number five was Abraham, and number six on the list of most influential Jews of all time according to Michael Shapiro in his book: Saul of Tarsus, who became Paul the apostle. Very interesting background. We know that Saul was a Roman citizen; that's huge, because it meant that he had the right to have a trial before Caesar, and he pulls out that card when he is on trial in Caesarea; he said, "I appeal my case to Caesar." We know that he was born in Tarsus of Cilicia, which was a Roman province.

If you were to look today on a map, you'd have to look to southeast Turkey to find Tarsus. The area he was born in was known for its black cloth called cilicium, and cilicium was used to make tents and other items. And we know that Paul professionally was a tentmaker; he could go from place to place and make these black and leather tents that were sold on the marketplace. But what makes him so unique is his testimony. So let's look at it a little more carefully and notice these three ingredients.

First of all, if you're going to have a real testimony, at some point you're going to need to shred your religious resume. Now I need to explain that, because some of you have had no religious background at all, so this isn't really an issue. It wasn't an issue with my wife; my wife had no spiritual baggage whatsoever. She was raised an atheist, and so she just came out of atheism to an encounter with Christ. But if you were raised in a religious home and you have trusted in the fact that you were raised in a religious home by spiritual parents, then you're going to need at some point to tear up your religious resume.

And here's why: because God has no grandchildren. He only has children. As many as received Him, John chapter one tells us, He gave them the right to become children of God to those who believe in His name. You can't go to heaven because your parents took you to church and they themselves had a personal relationship with Christ. It always has to be personal; it's always one generation at a time. So Paul has a huge religious resume, and what we notice here in the text is he tosses it out the window, throws it away.

Now, in looking at his resume, and we want to look very carefully beginning in verse five, there are six words that would describe Saul of Tarsus and his spiritual religious resume. Number one: heredity. Heredity—notice what he says in verse five concerning himself: "circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel." In other words, he wasn't converted as a Gentile into Judaism; he wasn't a proselyte. He was a Jew by birth and by ritual, circumcised the eighth day of his life.

So he could say, "I'm a true blue Jew. I'm a Jew by birth; I was born into this, and my circumcision wasn't as an adult proselyte, but it came when I was in that covenant relationship as a child." It's funny, if you do make it to Israel with us, and when you go to Jerusalem and they take you to the Western Wall and you see that enclosure of where the temple once stood at the time of Jesus, the locals will tell you to go up and pray at the Western Wall.

And they sort of say this tongue-in-cheek, but I think they kind of believe this at the same time: they say, "You know, we understand you can pray to God anywhere in the world, but here, it's a local call. You're in Jerusalem, man; you're in the holy city. You talk to God here and it's just a little bit better, it's a little bit closer." Paul could boast that he was circumcised the eighth day of the stock of Israel. He had at one time trusted in that. And there's a lot of people like Saul who trust in some ritual of their past to be right before God.

We mentioned this last week: it could be baptism, could be confirmation, it could be christening. And I've even noticed that people say, "Not only was I baptized, but I was baptized by this person in this church," like there's some special form or formula. So there was a little boy who was going to a Baptist church, and he decided to turn his cat into a Baptist. So he filled up the bathtub, and he was going to do it the Baptist way—full immersion baptism. You're going all the way under, not sprinkling; I'm going to put you all the way under.

So he filled up the bathtub. Well, you know how cats feel about water. So as he's filling it up and he accidentally sprinkles just a few drops on his hand, the cat freaked out and ran down the hallway. And the little boy yelled after him and said, "Fine, be a Methodist then!" Paul would say, "I'm not a Methodist or a Baptist. I was circumcised the eighth day of the stock of Israel." That's his heredity.

A second word that would describe him is nobility, for he says, "I was of the tribe of Benjamin." Now, if you know your Jewish history, you understand that Benjamin was one of the noble lines because the very first king of Israel came from the tribe of Benjamin. His name was King Saul. In fact, it could be that Saul of Tarsus was named after Saul the first king of Israel, who was also a Benjamite. Also, the tribe of Benjamin was the only tribe loyal to the tribe of Judah when the kingdom split.

So: heredity and nobility. Third word that would describe him is pedigree, for he says, "circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin..." Now notice the next phrase: "a Hebrew of the Hebrews." In other words, I was a Hebrew born of Hebrew parents. I wasn't raised a Hellenistic Jew, a Greek-cultured, Greek-speaking Jew; I was raised in the Hebrew style. Let me just explain it this way: in ancient times in that Greco-Roman world, there were Jewish people in the diaspora—the dispersion where you had Jews all over the world—they were raised in that culture and often with pagan customs.

But those who learned Hebrew by Hebrew parents in Hebrew-speaking synagogues felt themselves to be a little bit more superior than the rest. A Hebrew of the Hebrews. Now I'm going to give you a quick little biographical sketch of Saul of Tarsus growing up and his educational background. As a toddler, he would have learned to recite the Shema. Deuteronomy chapter six, verse four. He learned it in Hebrew. So imagine little Saul as a toddler saying the words out loud: *Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad*. "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one."

He learned that as a toddler. At age five, he would begin studying the scriptures. At age six, he was sent to the synagogue to learn to read and write the scriptures. At age 10, Saul would already have memorized large portions of the oral law—that is not just the scriptures, the traditions of the elders. At age 12, he would be preparing for his bar mitzvah, which would take place at age 13. *Bar Mitzvah* means son of the commandment; it was a rite of passage where you were now considered an adult member of the Jewish community.

At age 15, he would have more rigorous study where he would study the codified oral traditions, the Talmudic writings. And somewhere in those adolescent years, shortly after that, he was sent to Jerusalem for five to six years of rabbinical study. So: heredity, nobility, pedigree—he's giving his background. A fourth word that would describe Saul of Tarsus is piety, because notice what he says. He says at the end of verse five, not only "Hebrew of the Hebrews," but "concerning the law, a Pharisee."

Now I know, I know that you as a Western Christian in this modern era, you have read enough of your New Testament to know that Pharisees weren't great people. You're thinking, "Why would he put that on his resume?" Because Jesus spoke against the Pharisees, right? He called them whitewashed sepulchers, he called them hypocrites. However, the original word Pharisee, *Parashim*, means to be separated.

And when they started around 200 BC and they continued into the 1st century, they believed that they would give their whole life to studying and obeying the written law as well as the oral law. They started off really good; they just evolved into a hypocritical group. According to Josephus, the Jewish historian, the Pharisees were the leading sect among the Jews, the most accurate interpreters of the law.

As a Pharisee, he studied under a very particular mentor—do you remember his name? It's given in Acts 22. Gamaliel was his mentor. Gamaliel is one of the most famous scholars in Jewish history, regarded even to this day. What Gamaliel taught him to do was to argue. There was an ancient form of discourse called the diatribe—question and answer format to learn how to think and talk on your feet very persuasively. He would have had to memorize large portions of the Old Testament, which would become very profitable as time went on in his ministry.

So: heredity, nobility, pedigree, piety. A fifth word that would describe him is intensity. This dude was intense. Look at verse six: "concerning zeal..." If you want to talk about my zeal, "persecuting the church." Saul of Tarsus, as you know, was a zealous defender of Judaism. Now, why it's important to understand a little bit about Gamaliel is understanding that he sat under Gamaliel's mentorship helps you understand him. Because Gamaliel was hateful toward the Christians; he called Christians "Christian heretics."

And a very famous prayer uttered by Gamaliel goes this way: "Let there be no hope to them who apostatize from the true religion, and let these heretics, how many soever they be, all perish in a moment." He prayed that concerning Christian heretics, those who left Judaism and turned to Christ as their Messiah. No wonder then we read about Saul in Acts chapter eight, verse three, these words: "Saul was going everywhere to devastate the church. He went from house to house, dragging out both men and women to throw them into jail."

He learned that, in part, from Gamaliel. No wonder we read Acts chapter nine about Saul breathing out threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord. So this dude was so intense that he measured his religious zeal by his hatred. You know you're bad off when you're known more for what you're against than what you're for. A sixth word that would describe Saul of Tarsus is morality. Look at verse six again: "concerning zeal, persecuting the church; concerning the righteousness which is in the law, I was blameless."

That is, nobody could accuse me. I lived by the book. I did everything the law demanded, not just the written law, but the oral law. So get this: Saul of Tarsus had a righteousness by rule-keeping. How many people do you know who have a righteousness by rule-keeping? "I do my best, man. I try really hard. I work really hard at getting God to love me, doing all the right things. I'm a religious person." Righteousness by rule-keeping.

This is why religious people are the hardest people to see converted. Because they don't see that they have a need for anything. You share the gospel with them: "Look, I've gone to church all my life. I've been baptized, I've been confirmed, I've gone through other sacraments. I try really hard in going to church regularly." It's all a righteousness by rule-keeping. They have enough morality to keep them out of trouble, but not enough righteousness to get them into heaven. Morality.

Now, here's the question: why is Paul rattling off all of the things he's done in his past? Because there's this group we talked about last week called the Judaizers. Remember the Judaizers? They mixed law and grace together. They were telling Gentiles, non-Jews in Philippi, "You have to go back and keep Jewish laws and Jewish rituals to be right before God." So go back to verse three where we studied last week.

Paul says, "We are the circumcision," true believers, true followers "who worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. Though I also might have confidence in the flesh. If anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so." And then he lists all these things as if to say, "I can beat these silly arguers at their own religious game. Here's my background; here's my pedigree." Which leads me to a question: what are you boasting in? What are you trusting in? What are you confident in to be right before God?

Guest (Female): Thanks for joining us today on Connect with Skip Heitzig. Before we go, remember that your generosity helps share God's Word around the world, bringing truth and hope to people who need Jesus. And this month, we'll send you *The Making of a Biblical Leader: A Practical Guide to Leading Others* by Robert L. Furrow as our thanks for your gift.

With chapters from Skip and Lenya Heitzig and other trusted pastors, this book will equip you to lead with integrity and purpose in 2026 and beyond. Give now at connectwithskip.com/offer or call 800-922-1888. Thanks for spending time with us today, and we'll see you next time on Connect with Skip Heitzig.